68442Convertible

When I inherited my car it had a rubber fuel line with hose clamps from the fuel pump to the carb. I was encouraged to replace it with metal for safety reasons. I ordered a fuel line from Inline. When I ordered it, I asked if it would have a sharp enough bend to clear the t-stat housing and was told that it would. Well, it didn't. So I decided to make my own.

I bought a premade Poly-Armour brake line of the correct length from NAPA - suppose to be easy to bend - and a cheap bender from Harbor Freight. To make the really sharp bend coming out of the carb I made a template using a scrap 2X, filled the tube with sand to keep it from kinking, and clamped the nut in a vise. I bent a coat hanger to make a pattern, and used the bender for the other 2 bends.

I found that it was not possible to make the very sharp bend in the line using a bender. You can make the very sharp bend using a piece of straight tubing (no fittings or flares) with a bender, but there is no way to make the flare close enough to the bend or slide on the nut. If you use tubing that already has the flare and nut installed, you cannot use the bender to make the very sharp bend because the nut is in the way.

Here are the pics. Self explanatory I think.

68442Convertible

Here are more pics.

68442Convertible

The final 4 pics.

shiftbyear

Very nice craftsmanship, beautiful car too. Can you post some pics of the car also?

68442Convertible

Here is the fuel line I got from Inline. Nicely made, but the bend coming out of the carb is not close enough to the end of the line for my car.

My carb is a stock Quadrajet and I bought the inlet filter housing from Cliff Ruggles when I overhauled the carb.

68442Convertible

Thank you. There are pics on my page - or whatever its called.

allyolds68

I made mine as well as similarly I used a piece tie wire as a template

RetroRanger

Nice work and documentation.

I also got the metal carb line from inline tube, mine fit w only minor adjustments, I have a qjet w the long filter and a performer intake that has the carb in a higher position and allows more clearance

dream66

Good idea. Thanks !!!

rustyroger

Did you heat the tube when you tried bending it?. You can get a tighter curve if you do.

Roger.

nsnarsk65cutlass

I make the bend without the nut on,then make the double flair. I could not make that tight of a bend with the nut on.

mzbk2l

Beautiful bends! Makes me want to remake mine. I plumbed a GF652 fuel filter in while I was at it; had one of those glass ones in there that I always worried about. One of these days I'll add some insulation to the filter and lines, but probably not soon. (It took me 20 years to get my TH350 kickdown cable hooked to the carb!)

dream66

I did mine using a wooden die like in the pic above but didn't use sand so it didn't turn out as nice but man o man I sure do like the SMI quadrajet better than that dam Edelbrock that was on it.

DJS70cutlass

I had a similar situation on my 70 S. Took about 4 tries as I recall to make a line that both fit AND was removable! I didn't want to use that ridiculous **** that's available for Holley carbs....with fittings that are plated with something far too sticky so they cannot be properly tightened I'll get a few pics up if I can remember I made this post lol

83hurstguy

Nice homemade tool! I bought a line from the Right Stuff that did the same thing (hit water neck), but after rebending to fit (kinked it) and sending them the template, they tightened up the radius and sent me one that works.

nonhog

Great post, nice work, Thanks!